Timing	Activity	Purpose
3 minutes	Introduction – Will introduce myself and my role. Provide the group with a brief explanation on the history of the object(s) and my personal association with them. Tell them what I hoped to achieve with the exercise.	To get them to open up to the idea of sharing and being reflective, by me modelling it.
4 minutes	Reflective independent exercise – detail a memory or association they have with it.	To allow them space to think of any associations they have.
3 minutes	Feedback if they wish to	To get them to understand a little more about each other and to pick out any shared themes.
10 minutes	Group Exercise to play a game with the object(s) or come up with a new way to use them.	To get them working together and communicating
10 minutes	Ask for their feedback.	To gain an understanding of how the session went

Through my micro-teach I wanted to experiment with ways to achieve connection within a diverse group. I work as a Graduate Employability Specialist. We regularly run workshops and talks, that are open to anyone from the UAL community. This means that at any one event there could be a first year sat next to someone who attended UAL decades ago. Therefore, I need to ensure that the sessions are engaging and inclusive of everyone who chooses to attend, as feelings of belonging and community are some of the key values that our team holds.

Object: I chose marbles as the object(s) for my portion of the micro-teaching session. The reason I chose this was because I wanted something that would be familiar to as many people in the group as possible.

Through reflection and teamwork, I wanted to facilitate an activity that would allow them all to connect.  As although they have UAL in common sometimes that connection can feel weak depending on where they are in their graduate journey and their associations with the university. So, I wanted to present an object instantly recognisable that the group could connect with in the hopes that they would then be able to connect with each other on another level.

Activity: There were three parts to the activity, (although originally, I had planned two).

Introduction:

I deviated from my original lesson plan (figure 1) by adding a warmup exercise. I asked the group to close their eyes and listen to see if they could identify the object by sound only. I did this for two reasons. One, because I took note of how well it worked for me when another member of the group asked us to close our eyes to heighten our sense of touch during their micro-teach. The other reason was because my activity was third, so I felt the group would benefit from resetting for a moment and engaging a sense we hadn’t yet used.

Part 1: Individual reflection

I presented two options. They could either detail a memory they had that involved marbles or note down an association they had with them. They were then invited to share with the group if they felt comfortable to do so.

Outcome: They each chose to share a personal memory with the marbles that linked back to childhood.

Part 2: Teamwork

Again, they were presented with two options. To either play a game with the marbles or come up with a new use for the marbles together.

Outcome: They all chose to come up with a new way of using the marbles.

Feedback

They stated they enjoyed the reflection and the sharing (which was an element I was worried would be too invasive). However, they found it tricky to think of a new use for the marbles. Although, I noted that much of their barriers came from them trying to incorporate the marbles into a careers game. This was not a requirement of the activity, but rather an element they added likely because of my background and because all my focus was on them.

In the future I likely will not provide context around my role until after the activity, as I can see now how easy it is for them to shift their focus from themselves and each other on to me.

Figure 2: Object and activity instructions and prompts

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